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Harvard particle physicist Matthew Schwartz drops 36 papers authored with Claude

49 points · 74 comments · xqcgrek2

phoghed · 1790944096 · focus · HN ↗
A very high number of Redditors think they know more/better than a Harvard professor and dismiss him out of hand. May someone grant us all a measure of their confidence.
1. iLoveOncall · 1790946229 · focus · HN ↗
  It's extremely likely that a very high number of Redditors do actually know more/better than a Harvard Particle Physics professor on the topics on which he published papers, which include ecology, health, economy, geology, etc.
  This is literal slop.
  1. b3lvedere · 1790946433 · focus · HN ↗
    Is this the same as the infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters eventually writing Shakespeare theory?
    iLoveOncall · 1790946560 · focus · HN ↗
    No, because the monkeys do end up writing the work correctly. There's absolutely no guarantee that any of those papers are correct in any way.
    It literally is just spam, and nothing else.
    It's like the Nobel disease: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease
    ToValueFunfetti · 1790946914 · focus · HN ↗
    ?
    Surely, this is not correct. The monkeys are drastically less likely to produce valid words; the set of monkeys that produce valid words are much less likely to produce valid sentences, etc. etc. Very low bar to clear, but of course this is vastly better than infinite monkeys at producing good research.
    phoghed · 1790950907 · focus · HN ↗
    It relies entirely on infinity. Even a much smaller probability like flipping heads on a coin n times in a row quickly becomes practically impossible. How many monkeys would you need flipping coins to get 30 heads in a row?
    Now imagine that’s hitting the right letter on a keyboard many thousands of times in a row.
    I recommend the story A Short Stay in Hell

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